The Cartographers’ Guild is a forum created by and for map makers and aficionados, a place where every aspect of cartography can be admired, examined, learned, and discussed. Our membership consists of professional designers and artists, hobbyists, and amateurs—all are welcome to join and participate in the quest for cartographic skill and knowledge.

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Save often. Nothing is more frustrating than having your software crash and loosing all your hours of work. Save often, use incremental names if you are worried about loosing something.

As mentioned understand layers.

Look up the tutorials for Gimp. Off the top of my head look up Torstan, RobA and Arsheesh as they all have great tutorials. They aren't the only ones but I'm not steering you wrong.

One of the best things in my opinion is to learn how to use layer masks. See jfrazierjr's tutorial on masks as understanding how to do this will save you pain in the long run. It took me a while to see the value but it's so worth it.

Have fun and don't give up. I had never done anything digitally when I started using Gimp and it was maddening not being able to craft what I knew I could do on paper but I just kept at it. It may take a while but eventually you will be able to make the software sing under your hands.

“When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? If so, the score does not matter. But if you find that you did your best you were capable of, you will find it to your liking.” -John Wooden

Have fun and don't give up. I had never done anything digitally when I started using Gimp and it was maddening not being able to craft what I knew I could do on paper but I just kept at it. It may take a while but eventually you will be able to make the software sing under your hands.

You could also start with a hand drawn map, scan it, and start working with it in gimp. You need not start with a blank canvas :-)

That's pretty much what I had to do at the start but my skillset/ability was really lopsided.

“When it’s over and you look in the mirror, did you do the best that you were capable of? If so, the score does not matter. But if you find that you did your best you were capable of, you will find it to your liking.” -John Wooden

One of the best things in my opinion is to learn how to use layer masks. See jfrazierjr's tutorial on masks as understanding how to do this will save you pain in the long run. It took me a while to see the value but it's so worth it.

hmm.. normally, I would not want to puff up the ego of the lout that wrote that tutorial, BUT... I have to agree with Jax's assessment above. In my opinion, layer masks are the most critical feature in GIMP to learn and put into use as soon as possible. With that said, it may take several read-throughs and lots(for some it may be days and for others it may be weeks or even months) of playing with layer masks to really "get it", but once you DO, it's (in my opinion) like that moment when you were told you just won the lottery(or win a part in a movie with your favorite actor/director/franchise, or get to be onstage with your favorite band during a concert, or whatever really gets you going.... Of course, I am quite a bit of a geek and more than a bit odd.. so perhaps others will just think I am overstating the importance...)

Could you point me toward online information about the GIMP, particularly for beginners? I could especially use some sort of crib notes for accomplishing various tasks so I wouldn't have to look the information up in the middle of something else.